Description

Peter Bland’s collected poems for children are a major addition to a poetic presence spanning over sixty years. He began writing these poems for his own children in the 1950s, and has continued ever since … “Beguiled,” he says, “by the physicality of the childhood imagination, a sense of performance, and a love for the spoken word.”

From previous reviews:

Childhood delights that range from surrealist jaunts in dream landscapes
to visually precise vignettes of the natural world.­— NZ Review of Books

His poems have a quirky range of simple rhymes, fantasy, narrative,
and nonsense that kids love to learn and repeat.— ­Sunday Herald

Poems to amuse, poems to have fun with, and poems that
will make you think.— NZ Listener

About the author

Peter Bland is a poet and actor, whose writing commits to an everyday sub-urban sense of reality, often exploiting the framework of the dramatic monologue. He has a distinguished place in New Zealand theatre history as co-founder of Downstage and its artistic director 1964–68. He has worked as a stage and television actor and several of his own plays have been produced. Bland has published a large selection of poetry volumes in New Zealand and the UK and his memoir was released in 2004.